Helping Him Deal
by RobertDowneyJrLove
Summary: "Whatever you need. I have your back." "I know.You always do, Natasha. Stay with me?" Set during, 'Captain America: the Winter Soldier'. Steve's reaction to the identity of the winter soldier and Natasha being there to help him deal with the pain.


The day the Winter Soldier emerges is the same day Steve Rogers breaks three punching bags, bloodies his knuckles, and flings his shield into the glassed-in display case that houses his suit; his skin is torn and bleeding beneath the protective bandages and his eyes burn but whether he's crying or it's sweat, he couldn't say. His shirt is drying to his skin and salt cakes heavily on the white fabric, not to mention the loose khaki trousers he favored, wrinkling around the knee and dark with sweat in a specific area that, had he still been scrawny little forties' kid Steve, would have made him the bulls-eye for public humiliation. However, with his Captain America status, nobody dared to say a damn thing about it.

His shirt and leather jacket are tossed haphazardly in the corner, decidedly un-Steve like but he had been too mad to think clearly and had wanted to break something more than he wanted to worry about how wrinkled the button-up and jacket would be. He hadn't cared. He wanted destruction. He wanted to shut the world off and forget about the fact that his best friend was now his arch-nemesis. He's sitting on a bench near the door, staring at his bleeding hands and contemplating whether or not crying is worth it. It doesn't seem like it, but he is desparately craving emotional release.

The punching bags hadn't worked and flinging his shield had only earned him a stern dressing down from Fury. (_After the Hulk's recent rampage, he was a little on edge._) He's not sure his hands can take anymore abuse, as bruises were already forming and blood still leaked through the bandages. A conscious effort to stop them proves vain when tears dampen his cheeks. He just lets them fall. He doesn't care anymore. Although, he wishes he had cared enough to seek out Bucky, to find out what had happened to his friend after he was put on ice. He's not sure that would have helped anything but maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't hurt so damn much to see him as he is now.

The dark fabric of a familiar cat-suit and a flash of brilliant red hair catch his peripheral vision.

Natasha.

She sits wordlessly beside him, arms folded across her chest and her shoulders slumped forward. He wonders if she's as exhausted as he is, or if she feels defeated by this whole situation. "What do you want, Natasha?" he inquires gruffly. "Fury send you?"

"No."

His head turns sharply, blue eyes regarding her with doubt, but what he sees in her stops him from voicing it. She's not lying, she wasn't sent by Fury or Coulson. She is just concerned about his well-being. It is very rare that Natasha is concerned, as most of the time she maintains control over her emotions, but this is different. He suspects that her reason for coming here is because it is him. He isn't sure she would do this for any of the other Avengers.

"Be honest, Tasha, would you have come here if it wasn't me?" Steve demands bitterly. "I didn't see you running to Stark's side when he challenged the Mandarin. Are you here out of concern or because nobody wants to see America's darling super-soldier bite the dust?"

"Stark can take care of himself." she offers with a smirk, only to soften upon his lack of response. "I'm here out of concern, Steve."

"How'd you find me, anyway?"

"You aren't a hard man to figure out." she laughs lightly. Her lips thin into a grim line and her voice goes hoarse, rough. "I won't tell you what I think you want to hear. We both know I'd be lying and very wrong. I will tell you this. He is driven by power. The more he has, the more he wants. He'll kill everyone and everything in his way, consequences be damned."

"Except me."

He doesn't say it because he's egotistical or because he knows for sure that he can win. He speaks as Bucky's former best friend, as the person who at one time, knew him best. As the person who knows that Bucky is still in there somewhere, that he still recognizes Steve on some level, and wants his attention. He recognizes James Buchanan Barnes not as the ghost of an enemy but as the very real friend, the protector of that scrawny kid from Brooklyn. And, he'll do everything in his power to get his best friend back.

"He can't kill you." Natasha reaffirms what Steve already knows. "I think he still knows who you are. Somewhere in there is the Bucky that you knew."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Steve sighs softly. Natasha stares at him curiously, urging him to elaborate. "If Bucky, the real one, is still in there and he knows me, I'm the only thing he held onto. He knows me. He doesn't know any of you. He doesn't realize...he'll kill you. All of you."

"I live with the knowledge that someone could kill me everyday, Steve." Natasha informs him in the same matter-of-fact tone, he's heard from her before. "You're going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that to scare me."

"I'm not trying to scare you, Tasha." Steve drops his chin to his chest, trying in vain to gather his thoughts into some form of coherency. "I just...I don't want...he's going to."

"I know." she nods toward the bandages on his hands. "Let me take you home. Clean that up for you."

He wants to bite back, tell her that he can get himself home and clean his wounds himself, but he knows she'll fight. She refuses to let him wallow in his own misery and guilt. She won't let him go home alone, just so he can sit in the dark, lick his wounds, and possibly try to get drunk, even if his efforts would prove futile. No conversation is needed when she latches onto his bicep and moves to stand up from the bench. The drive to his apartment is made in twenty minutes of complete, and not totally awkward, silence.

"I loved him, y'know?" Steve poses the question in the elevator but it's rhetorical and he's not expecting an answer. "He was like my brother. He protected me."

"He was your best friend."

She unlocks his apartment door and tugs him in. (_She's never told him this, but she always wonders why he chose an apartment when he earns more than enough money to buy any house he wants.) _He slips back behind the comfortable shield of silence that he relies on when he's hurt. He doesn't want to talk and if anybody understands that, it's Natasha. She leads him into his bathroom and motions for him to sit down. He takes a seat on the toilet and waits for her to tend to his hands.

"It's not like you not to wrap your hands." she tilts her head in curiosity, wiping the dried blood off of his knuckles with a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide.

"I was angry." Steve rasps.

"And this is how you deal with it?" Natasha's eyebrows shoot skyward.

"Fury wasn't particularly happy with my decision to throw my shield at a glass case." Steve mumbles sheepishly, looking away. "I decided to blow off some steam but I broke two punching bags before I remembered to wrap my hands."

Natasha laughs softly, dropping the bloody cotton into his garbage can. His tube of Neosporin is nearly gone but she squeezes what she can out of it and smears the antibiotic goo onto his knuckles before bandaging them properly with a gauze wrap and nearly a whole roll of medical tape - he has large hands, the wrap wouldn't hold properly with just a few measly pieces. He watches her diligently return everything to its rightful place. The bottle of hydrogen peroxide is on its way back to the top shelf of his medicine cabinet when his hands curl around her hips and pulls her back to him. He wraps his arms completely around her, pulling her against him. She tilts back, using his arms for balance and takes his face into her hands, thumbs tracing along his cheekbones.

His chin is resting just beneath her sternum and his eyes convey thirty different emotions at once. He's angry and bitter and indifferent and unsure and figuring out what he should be feeling is like sorting through the nine circles of hell to find out which form of torture hurts the least. They're all painful and he doesn't want any of them. He just wants things to be different; he wants Bucky to be Bucky again. He wants his best friend back.

"He was my best friend and the Bucky I remember will always be." he murmurs, tilting his head down, but his eyes are still intently focused on hers. She's quiet, but not emotionless. She's as miserable as he is but he's not sure why - because he's miserable or because of the situation they're being thrown into. "But this new Bucky, he doesn't fit into my life. He's a bully and I've spent the majority of my time in this century fighting bullies. I have to let him go."

There's a fierceness about him, something little harder, a little more of a primal instinct than a _need _to do good. She doesn't speak, instead choosing to sink down onto his lap. Eye contact when so many emotions linger between them is intense but neither can break the hold they have over each other. She draws him up into a kiss, tilting her head to avoid an awkward collision of noses. There's nothing particularly special about it. It's a simple kiss, a way of reaffirming their connection, the unspoken bond of trust between them. His arms tighten around her and her voice is barely heard when she speaks again.

"Whatever you need. I have your back."

"I know." he slips one arm between them, reaching up to tangle his fingers in her hair. "You always do, Natasha. Stay with me?"

"Sure."

If she doesn't stay, he'll be awake all night, still as vigilant and alert as he was when he ran ten miles early that morning. She stays with him the entire night but he's not sure she sleeps because when he wakes up at varying times of the night, she's there to run her fingers through his hair and rub the back of his neck to ease him back to sleep. She doesn't seem to mind that he clutches her to him like a teddy bear or that the bed in his D.C. apartment isn't exactly made for two people.

She cares about him and doing whatever it takes to get him through this.

"Love you, Natasha."

The words are mumbled into her side as he's waking up and for a moment, she thinks she's heard him wrong but he mumbles again and this time she knows she hadn't been wrong at all. He had said it and it is nothing but the truth - he didn't lie, not even in his sleep. She knows, without thinking about it, that she loves him too. He isn't scared of her and whatever's in her past doesn't matter to him. She does. For the first time in a long while, someone actually cares about her as a person, as a woman. He's shown her how to love, that being loved is a beautiful thing.

The sun is just beginning its slow ascension into the sky, when she sinks her fingers into his hair and closes her eyes, revelling in the peaceful bliss of an early morning. It's such a rarity with their jobs and knowing their lives will be a chaotic hell soon leaves her eager to enjoy the morning for what it is. Especially, if it's with him.

"Love you too, Steve."

* * *

**Hi! So, I got a question asking me if I was going to do anything centered around Captain America: The Winter Soldier and I already had this in the works, I just needed to finish it but I had a couple of other projects to do too, so this kind of got shoved onto the back burner but I was in the mood so I finished it off and it transformed into the first time I've ever had them say 'I love you'...in their own special Steve and Natasha way. Not one for convention, I can tell you that much. So, anyway. Um, I asked my best friend on and off of this site if I should do a Q&A and her answer was a resounding 'YES' - I'm serious, all capital letters on her twitter page so I thought, what the heck? Grow a set and do it, dummy. So, if you have a question you'd like to me to answer, fire away. Nothing too personal, please, though. I'm not a terribly open person unless I know you really well but just general questions about writing or whatever. I'll have the answers posted on my profile as soon as possible.**

**Love ya, **

**RobertDowneyJrLove **


End file.
